[governance] RE: Human rights and new gTLDs

[Danny Younger]

Hi Lee,

It wasn't so much that auctions were rejected in favor
of another approach, rather it was the case that
auctions weren't even considered or discussed by those
GNSO constituencies (notably the Business
Constituency) that at the earlier Washington session
had already made their minds up that they hated the
concept of auctions.

Until...

they realized that their constituency members
absolutely needed to have auctions in order to secure
for themselves at the second level certain
single-character reserved names -- Overstock wanted to
get O.COM and Yahoo wanted Y.COM, and the only way
they could be reasonably sure of obtaining these was
to agree to the concept of domain name allocation by
way of auction.

So now the opposition to auctions seems to have
quickly melted away -- I never cease to be amazed at
how greed manages to displace strongly held views...

Feel free to continue pushing for auctions; you may
now have a more receptive audience.

regards,
Danny


--- Lee McKnight <LMcKnigh at syr.edu> wrote:

> Kieren,
> 
> I appreciate your engagement even if your use of the
> word 'inevitable'
> was unfortunate; since very little is truly
> inevitable in the course of
> human events.   
> 
> As you may recall folks, including myself and
> Milton, have developed
> and advocated 'regular, transparent and objectuve'
> procedures for gTLD
> allocation for some time, and offered concrete
> suggestions on how those
> could be implemented. As have the OECD.
> 
> I understand the auction method we advocated has
> been rejected for a
> beauty contest approach of picking winners and
> losers.  
> 
> As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder;
> best of luck to
> ICANN implementing a 'regular, transparent and
> objective' method for
> measuring beautiful gTLDs and not so beautiful
> gTLDs.
> 
> Lee
> 
> 
> 
> Prof. Lee W. McKnight
> School of Information Studies
> Syracuse University
> +1-315-443-6891office
> +1-315-278-4392 mobile
> 
> >>> kierenmccarthy at gmail.com 10/1/2007 9:36:37 AM
> >>>
> > Yet, despite your mockery, that is more or less
> how we define 
> > censorship in the US.  We even have a name for the
> false doctrine you
> 
> > approve of: "the heckler's veto"
> 
> 
> I wasn't mocking anyone. And I don't think a
> reasonable review of what
> I
> wrote would reveal anything approaching mockery.
> 
> I admire your semantic efforts of "false doctrine"
> and "heckler's veto"
> to
> undermine a point of view without engaging on the
> actual points but
> unfortunately all that leaves is one blinkered and
> aggressive response
> to
> one attempt at broader discussion and understanding.
> 
> And your attempt to argue that I am presenting the
> concept of "well
> meaning
> censorship" would be insulting if it wasn't so
> silly.
> 
> 
> 
> I think there are two broad points here:
> 
> * The Internet is global, and so any attempt to
> impose one prevailing
> philosophy over it are doomed to failure. Everyone
> would do well to
> remember
> that.
> 
> * The approach to discourse that sees anyone with a
> dissenting view
> attacked
> with little or no effort to review what they
> actually said is never
> going to
> provide any useful conclusion, and so all its
> resulting fire and heat
> will
> end up being ignored. 
> 
> 
> 
> Danny Younger actually makes an effort to engage in
> a later post I
> see,
> arguing that there is the possibility for a huge
> number of new gTLDs to
> be
> blocked.
> 
> I have to confess this is my concern as well - which
> is why it is vital
> that
> the actual mechanisms for deciding a new gTLD when
> it is queried is
> where
> the attention should be focused.
> 
> But all the while that the proponents of a far less
> intellectual-property
> view of the world spend shouting and refusing to
> engage, the more the
> underlying system will take on the characteristics
> of those that seek
> to
> build, rather than impose, consensus.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Kieren
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law
> [mailto:froomkin at law.miami.edu] 
> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 1:48 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Kieren McCarthy
> Subject: RE: [governance] RE: Human rights and new
> gTLDs
> 
> On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Kieren McCarthy wrote:
> 
> > You know, I have given these claims about human
> rights and new gTLDs
> some
> > consideration and I still just don't see the
> logic.
> >
> > Is it censorship to stop certain new gTLDs from
> being approved? In
> one
> > sense, yes. But only if you define censorship as
> stopping people
> from
> doing
> > whatever they want despite the clear offence that
> will be taken by
> others.
> 
> Yet, despite your mockery, that is more or less how
> we define
> censorship 
> in the US.  We even have a name for the false
> doctrine you approve of:
> 
> "the heckler's veto" (the doctrine that centralized
> authority can
> suppress 
> speech because of its concern for a 3rd party's
> reaction) -- and we
> VERY 
> strongly disapprove of it.  That B claims offense
> *cannot* be allowed
> to 
> muzzle A, or else A's *right* to speak is illusory.
> 
> The rest of your note proceeds under the assumption
> that it's somehow
> not 
> cencorship if it's well meaning.  It would be more
> persuasive to talk
> of 
> 'balancing' rights than to try to argue somehow that
> this isn't
> censorship 
> when it clearly is.
> 
> To shift to a 'balancing' view does, however,
> require that one
> articlute a 
> 'right not to be offended' equal in value and weight
> to the right to 
> speak, and also equal in likely long run effect to
> the prophylactic
> rule 
> that governments (or quasi-governmental entities for
> that matter) ought
> 
> not to be trusted to regulate speech.  This is not
> easy to do, although
> 
> some have tried.
> 
> > This type of "censorship" is more simply defined
> as the rules that
> hold
> any
> 
=== message truncated ===



       
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